


I Turn To The Serpent

by SlayToon



Series: Songfic For The Heartsick [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Banter, Broken, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Good vs Evil, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, No Smut, Songfic, The Dresden Files - Freeform, Trying To Be Good, Winter Knight Harry Dresden, also pre smut, becoming evil, i want to be a good person, is that still a thing, learning how to write again, nearly smut, not quite smut, post smut, smut next time I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 17:37:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17871773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlayToon/pseuds/SlayToon
Summary: I saw my father on the other side. He couldn't help me, he was terrified.Stay good. Turn evil. It sounds like a much simpler choice than it is.But if anyone knows when simple things are too good to be true, it's Harry Dresden.I hear the voices in the devil's choir. Burning forever in the lake of fire.After losing everything, after sacrificing bites of yourself for years on end only to be met with the realization you're all out of anything to give, what's a 'good guy' to do?I'd rather die than kneel by your side.





	I Turn To The Serpent

"Come on," her amused voice pinged off the slick stone walls. "I _know_ you can do better than that."

I sighed, blowing my hair off my face.

Really? You're gonna be a bully kid about this?"

Mab smiled softly, crossing her arms.

"If that's how you see it, sure. Why not?"

It irked me when she talked like that, all normal. I was used to 'thee, thou, thine' from these creatures.  
And that was what I saw Mab, Queen Of Air And Darkess as, no matter how mortal she could bind her appearance to be: a _creature_. A _thing_. An animal.  
She knew this, and embraced it.

"I guess I expect more out of your scary ass."

I muttered, righting myself again and bringing up the sigil she'd etched into my memory.  
It shimmered silver-blue in the black room, illuminating her features.  
She watched, looking sultry-bored with half-lidded blue eyes and her long fingers cupping her chin.  
The symbol- I didn't yet know what it was or why it mattered to her- was an arrow fired through a target. Feathered at its end, pointed savagely sharp, it was a delicate, deadly thing.  
I didn't know its importance, but I knew its connection to Mab, and the fae in general.

"Better."

She commended, crossing her legs at the ankles.

Her fingertips rested content on her thigh, making a sky-blue snowflake pattern etch her bare skin.  
I looked down, not wanting to give her that satisfaction.

"This is rookie league, just for the record."

I said, watching as the image shimmered between us.

"Did I ask for your input?"

The Queen asked, looking idly up at me.

"It's just that holding a glamour isn't anything to- "

Her hand was faster than I had been anticipating.  
A swift knock to my forearm sent the icecicle-colored remnants scattering before they dissipated, and her lithe, ethereal body sent mine back flat into the floor.

"What wast yond comment concerning my frightful rampallian?"

The Queen inquired, her stormy blue eyes trained down on me.

It took me a good five seconds to reboot a comment back at her.

" 'Rampallian'? What the _fuck_?"

I said between bouts of laughter.

Mab glared down her angular nose at me. 

"There's a literal faerie queen in thine _lap_ and that's what thee comes up with?"

Her venacular, molded after mine, I was beginning to suspect, hit my ear wrong. But it was an effort on her part.

"Mab. You've got me at something of a disadvantage here,"

I drawled, quirking my eyebrow between the two of us.

The Winter faerie rolled her eyes, encircling my wrists with her hands and spreading my arms from my chest snow-angel style.

"Honestly,"

She murmured, delight and disgust intermingled in her voice.

I had a vague idea of how much time had passed since my awakening on Demonreach, firmly in Mab's grip.  
Vague, because the passage of time in Arctis Tor is less like sands through an hourglass than it is molasses through a thimble, but it had been long enough that, physically, I was feeling more and more like I had my proverbial groove back.

"Knight."

Mab said sharply.

I glanced up at her, pushing through the fog of my thoughts.

"What is it, my- My _God_ ,"

Bay-brown hair down in ringlets, curling about slender shoulders and falling to tickle my chin. Bottomless hazel pools of eyes. Dressed, in lax terms of the word, in a black button-down blouse done halfway down. Brown skin that felt like velvet in familiar places. 

"Thou art a simple dissemble. 

Mab said, a laugh brewing in her words.

"My Knight, be it mortal matters of the heart or mortal wants deeper South, thou art a _very_ simple-"

I sprung without thinking. Exactly as she- and they before her- had trained me.

I wound her hair into my fist and shoved her back onto her shins, up and away and _off of me_.

In a sitting position that strained my hurt ribs and and waist, already abused for the day, I pulled her face up to mine.

"Drop it," I growled through my teeth. "Drop it right this fucking second or I'm going to knock your bitch teeth out."

An articulate threat, for sure, but it worked.

Mab jerked away from me and backed off, going on her knees as the glamour wavered in and out of clarity.

"Your fell instincts do not amuse me."

She gritted, her voice staticky. It danced between being hers and being Susan's. 

"Thought you wanted a circus bear."

I shot, leaning on a palm to sit upright.

The fading image of Susan on her features was enough to keep the ball of dread and fury wound tight in my gut. 

"I wanted _loyalty_. I thought pleasing you would be the simplest way to achieve that. I see I assumed wrong."

She started rising to her feet, images overlaying over her as her shaken glamour tried to right itself.

"And you thought by masquerading as a -" I couldn't utter the words dead and person in the same sentence concerning her. What I had seen and what I had _done_ be damned. "You thought masquerading as Susan would achieve any damn thing?"

Mab shook her head, her appearance now whirling at a dizzying pace.

"Unfortunately. I think I have an improved tact."

She smiled at me, her face all Mab, all cold, hard angles and all Winter, and snapped her fingers.

The world turned to black and pain.

I felt the cold spidered marble under my back, the bare strip of my skin between my shorts and my t-shirt simultaneously fire-hot with pain and coldly numb.

"Mab," I sputtered, my legs spasming ueslessly, my spine wracked with pain and heat. "Mab, what'd you- Do- Do to- To me?"

She crossed her arms. She now stood in a floor-dragging grey silk gown, her iron hair framing her face.

"You mistook healing for repair, my Knight. Perhaps you have forgotten the extent to which you've been _crippled._ "

I hadn't forgotten. Not for long enough.

Sprawled, broken and useless, the ashen remnants of my life scattered on the air. 

"I'm sorry."

I gritted out.

A cold hand came to rest on my straining neck and she pinched my earlobe with her fingers.

"For?"

Hell's bells, so much worse than a belt. Or a closed fist, or an open-handed slap across the mouth. Worse than a strategic lance to the gut with a sharpened icecicle.

"For... Backtalking? Whatever, Mab, just make it..."

She lowered her lips to mine and kissed me, unheatedly, without a hint of want or need.

"Stop."

I finished, drawing back from her.

I laid my head back, clenching my fist open and shut a few times to ground back to reality, whatever that meant for me anymore.

Mab sat with her legs curled under her, twirling a strand of my hair around her fingers.

"You'll behave now?"

I glowered at her

Now I knew the real extent. I knew I was injured beyond repair, I had even been told by a professional I was, in fact, crippled. But it hadn't hit for me until then, torn down into a defenseless mess by a simple snap of fingers.

Mab's self-righteous smile told me she saw thre realization stark and clear.

"Know that I would not have done that were it not completely justified."

In thoery, fae cannot lie. Dodge the truth, yes. Tell bald-faced lies? No. 

Mab was telling me _her_ honest truth.

"How do you do this?

I asked, low. My whispered tone bounced back to me in a marble reverb.

"How do you do these things you do?"

The Queen Of Air and Darkess, all herself instead of throwing veils and glamours and fauxness, smiled gently and slid back down my body to where she had been before, hands gently circling my biceps.

"How does one aim at an animal's heart so it can be eaten? How does one betray one's own not for justice but spite, and laughter?"

Answer your questions with more questions? Of _fucking_ course.

When I didn't answer, Mab curled her fingers into my hair, gently brushing it away from my eyes.

"You're young, yet. Some day you'll understand."

"Don't patronize me, you bitchcicle.

I said intelligently.

"I'm not joining the dark side. We've been over this."

Mab smiled again. It wasn't a spiteful expression. Tired of the current subject maybe, but not angry.

"You think these 'sides' you mention are much more clearly defined than they are."

I swallowed, watching her spread above me; legs astride mine, waist curled to meet my eyes.

"Basically, you don't believe in right and wrong. Cliche', but, I dig it."

Mab lowered herself to me, a soft arm tucked beneath my head.

"I'm asking you to be compliant. I could at least be cooperative."

She shifted, right there on top of me, in my hands.

I saw blue eyes and blond hair phase through and my heart clenched up, but they spirited out. 

Wheat-brown hair, speckled green eyes, olive skin touched by the sun and holding its wamth.

Part Sarissa, a little Elaine. Lash in her face; the slant of her mouth and the shape of her eyes.

A black t-shirt emblazened with a big red and white C.

Nothing else.

"Mab, I can barely look at you. What are you trying to pull?"

Mab smiled again, her hand sliding down my chest to stop at a particular juncture.

"Ideally this."

God fucking help me.

I barked out a laugh, my heart still jackhammering from the relatively rapid round of trauma.

"You're horrible."

Mab tilted her head. 

"I believe that's subjective."

She dipped her head to kiss me again, bringing me back off into the void with her. In the background, by her skilled pull of magic, the radio in the corner snicked on and let out a dark melody.

_I blame God for the death of my father. I cried and prayed in the throes of a slaughter. I break the chains; I find the strength to call the fallen angels to take my pain away..._

**Author's Note:**

> Songfics #1: Good Vs. Evil.  
> Bobaflex-Pray To The Devil.  
> The Dresden Files. 
> 
> This is absolutely all Jim's fault. You can't put a guy like Harry through these straits and expect a 'nice guy' to emerge. Harry's. Fucking. Human.
> 
> Gonna be posting as individual stories instead of chapters. It's a series though, so it'll be easy to find.  
> Come back for more songfic. It's long overdue.  
> -Toons


End file.
